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The Easter Parade smokers of 1929 (torches of freedom)
Young women smoked in New York's 1929 Easter Parade in a stunt Edward Bernays staged for a tobacco client. Bernays's later account of its fame and of a psychoanalyst's advice is not matched by the press coverage described by historians.
- Where it sits
- Consumer applicationUse of psychology, or claims about it, in commerce, policy or product design.
- Evidence level
- ContestedThe evidence conflicts or is disputed, for example after failed replications.
- Organizations
- American Tobacco CompanyAn organization is listed where the sources concern it. The text says exactly how.
- Sources inspected
- 4 of 42 with the relevant text, company document or archive item checked, 2 as an abstract or reference article, 0 not verified.
What happened
On Easter Sunday, 31 March 1929, young women smoked in New York's Easter Parade in a stunt organized by Edward Bernays for a tobacco client. Ewen writes, qualifying it with so the story goes, that George W. Hill, owner of American Tobacco, asked Bernays to campaign against the hussy label for women smokers. Newspaper reports are dated 1 April 1929.
The psychological idea
Bernays's own account is in his 1965 memoir, as summarized by Kliegl. Ten debutantes lit cigarettes at a signal and told reporters who had been tipped off that they were protesting women's inequality. Bernays says the next day's papers broke the taboo. Topic, citing the memoir, adds that he consulted the psychoanalyst A. A. Brill, who told him women saw cigarettes as torches of freedom.
In practice
The recorded coverage was thinner. Kliegl's blog post describes three reports of 1 April 1929. The New York Times gave the smokers one sentence, saying some girls puffed cigarettes as a gesture of freedom. The Chicago Daily Tribune described five girls smoking beside sandwich men. The Los Angeles Times said the women attracted little attention. Kliegl says the phrase torches of freedom is absent from them. The pages themselves were not opened.
Why it mattered
The stunt is a textbook example of a staged public relations event. Murphree finds that descriptions of it as carefully staged are accurate, but that the idea that the news media fell for it in a significant way is a myth Bernays drove, and that coverage was not nearly as celebratory as he claimed.
Limits and qualifications
Women's public smoking was already increasing, according to Ewen, who says many middle-class women smoked in public by 1929, and to Topic, citing Segrave. Topic's study of 294 New York Times articles finds that condemnation of women who smoked intensified through the 1920s. Bernays's account dates from 1965, and Brill's role rests on his telling. Effect on smoking rates is not shown.
Evidence behind the claims
Kliegl, citing Bernays's 1965 memoir Biography of an Idea (pp. 386 to 387), reports that ten debutantes marched in the Easter Parade, lit cigarettes at a signal and told pre-arranged reporters they were protesting women's inequality, and that the next day's papers carried the story and the taboo was broken.
Topic, citing Bernays's 1965 memoir, says Bernays consulted A. A. Brill, who told him women saw cigarettes as torches of freedom; Ewen reports a consultation with Brill, who said some women regard cigarettes as symbols of freedom.
Kliegl says the New York Times of 1 April 1929 gave the smokers one sentence in a parade report, the Chicago Daily Tribune described five girls smoking cigarettes beside sandwich men, the Los Angeles Times said the women attracted but little attention, and the phrase torches of freedom did not appear in these reports.
Ewen says that, so the story goes, American Tobacco's owner George W. Hill asked Bernays to run a campaign against the hussy label; that Bernays says ten women marched; that the parade was not a major news story and actual coverage was far more modest than Bernays's tale suggests; and that by 1929 many proper middle-class women already smoked in public.
Murphree finds that descriptions of the march as carefully staged are accurate, that the idea the news media fell for it in a significant way is a Bernays-driven myth, that coverage was significant but not nearly as celebratory as Bernays claimed, and that its impact was likely less extensive or persuasive than suggested.
Topic analyzed 294 New York Times articles from 1870 to 1929 and finds that the oppression of women who smoked intensified in the 1920s and that the campaign addressed an existing social issue; Topic gives the parade date as 31 March 1929 and, citing Segrave, says women began smoking publicly from 1908 to 1919 and more publicly from 1919 to 1927.
Kliegl says the stunt was one part of a larger American Tobacco campaign aimed at women in the 1920s and early 1930s.
People involved
- Edward Bernays. Public relations counsel who arranged the stunt and later told the story
- A. A. Brill. Psychoanalyst whom Bernays says he consulted
- George W. Hill. Owner of American Tobacco, per Ewen's account
In the Psy101 course
- OpenStax Psychology 2e, section 12.3: Attitudes and PersuasionChapter 12, Social Psychology. Context. The section discusses this topic.Covers attitude change and persuasion with advertising examples. It does not discuss public relations stunts or women's smoking.
This is course relevance only. It is not evidence for the historical or corporate claims on this page.See the full course map.
Sources and inspection
4 of 4 sources were opened and read at the level shown. A source marked as not verified supports no claim on this page by itself.
- [1]Public Relations CampaignEwen, S.. American Heritage 51(3), May/June 2000, 2000. Journal article. Secondary account.Relevant text checkedRead the article as returned by the fetch tool, checking the passages on Hill, the ten women, Ruth Hale, Brill, coverage and middle-class smoking. The page shows a web display date; the print issue is May/June 2000.
- [2]Edward Bernays's 1929 Torches of Freedom march: Myths and historical significanceMurphree, V.. American Journalism 32(3), 258-281; University of Southern Mississippi repository record, 2015. Journal article. Critique or replication.Abstract or publisher record onlyRead the repository record with the abstract. The article itself was not opened.
- [3]Torches of Freedom, or the self-perpetuating promotional power of scienceKliegl, M.. Science, comma blog, University of Kent, 2012. Reference work. Secondary account.Reference article readRead the blog post by a doctoral student. It quotes three 1 April 1929 newspaper pieces and cites Bernays's memoir; the newspaper pages were not opened, so these are second-hand. The post shows no year; 2012 is inferred from adjacent posts in the blog's archive.
- [4]An Analysis of the Smoking Debate ahead of Bernays' Torches of Freedom Campaign through the lens of the New York Times Coverage (1870-1929)Topic, M.. Journal of Historical Research in Marketing; Leeds Beckett repository, accepted version, 2021. Journal article. Critique or replication.Relevant text checkedRead pages 1 to 8 of the accepted manuscript as page images: abstract, introduction and the discussion of criticism and context. The 294-article analysis itself was not read.
Access note: The newspaper reports are known only through a blog post; the pages were not opened. Bernays's memoir and Amos and Haglund (2000) were not opened. No smoking prevalence figures are given because none were verified.
Independent source review: Claude review agent, independent of the research agent, 2026-10-21. Verdict: pass-with-edits.